Personal Spending

It’s temping to relegate inflation to the ash heap of history. Price increases are minuscule in the U.S. and are actually negative in Europe. But history shows that no economic trend lasts forever. That said, let’s enjoy low inflation while we have it.

As winter fades, it’s time to seriously gear up to make your financial goals for 2015 real. They range from the simple and quick to the complex and long-term. Here’s a checklist to get you started and keep you going.

Money is just one challenge to becoming part of a couple. Probably the most common question couples ask concerns how to manage cash, specifically whether to combine all money into one joint account, keep everything separate or use some combination. The answer: There is no one best method.

The desire to amass wealth should be about more than simply status and security. It should be about enhancing your emotional and spiritual life. Now, amid the quiet of mid-winter, is a good time to pause and think about what abundance really means.

After last Christmas, millions of people – including maybe you – returned gifts you didn’t want and either exchanged or just pocketed a refund. The process only increased the pressure that exhausts everyone, especially parents: Rush and spend to the limit of your credit, often to help your kids. Your kids are watching, though, and for their own good you must teach realities about money.

Maybe your family just wrapped up its holiday tradition of big gatherings where grandma headed the fireside sing-along or everyone got a year’s wisdom from your goofy brother-in-law. Maybe too you seethed silently at how well one relative is doing financially. As the holidays fade, we all must recognize our unrelenting desire to compare ourselves to loved ones – a path to both bad moods and potentially bad money moves.